How did the blazers manage to lose to the Lakers in 2000?

[AlphaWolf24]

Kobe went into Gawd mode and scored 8 points in a row to take the lead....

then assisted on another 4 points for the final nail.....remember him crossing up the GOAT perimeter defender then splitting the help defender to throw the most perfect lob to the other guy???.....

00' Kobe started it all.... - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=383sF...el_video_title

[PrimeJohnnyDepp]

Watched that game and saw Lakers play great defense, and Blazers choking. Did that ref just go 'aha now im going to make Lakers win' after 4 quarters and 1/4 of 4th quarter? Go watch more Iluminati videos loser.

[ThaSwagg3r]

Seriously? I thought it was universally known that they pulled a "LeBron James"

[Theoo's Daddy]

/THREAD.

[All Net]

Meh. The question should be how did a team with no star power and a 16/7 Rasheed Wallace as its player take a peak Shaq + Kobe-led LA team to 7 games? Depth is irrelevant in the playoffs without star power at the top. There's only been one superstar-less champion(Detroit) the last 31 years.

It's LA who were doing some massive choking by even letting the series get that far.

Maybe but Portland were still super talented

L.A like they have done for years took their foot off the gas and let Portland in.

[AlphaWolf24]

Maybe but Portland were still super talented

L.A like they have done for years took their foot off the gas and let Portland in.

2011 NBA Finals says hello


and Shaq had a History of Losing series with a more stacked team.....until Kobe became Kobe.

[L.A. Jazz]

"where is Pipp"

Pipp is one of my favorites but i blame him a lot for the 4th quater of game 7. it was his time to lead the team, to create and make the right plays, but he disappeared.

but still a great series to watch. Shaq vs Sabonis, Sheed vs Geen, Pipp vs Kobe, Kobe vs Stoudemire, Sheed vs Refs, ...

[chains5000]

They choked hard, that's all. No refs excuse.

[ShaqAttack3234]

The Lakers had quite a few weaknesses.

3 point shooting- Portland was able to double and triple Shaq constantly because the Lakers were not a good 3 point shooting team. And they were able to pull this off better than most because they had Sabonis who was as big as Shaq and could prevent him from getting good position, so he couldn't go right up with the shot. He'd have to put the ball on the floor and as soon as he did, Portland would double, or often before he put the ball on the floor. Pippen was a key to this as well.

I used these following clips in another post(and this was from just the first game when Shaq ended up having his best game of the series).

Shaq's first touch of the series- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y3GGuQYfwQ#t=3m28s

As you can see, Rasheed comes over before Shaq even puts the ball on the floor. Harper does make the 3 in this case, but this wasn't what usually happened as he only made 3 of them total in the 7 game series and was a 23% 3 point shooter during that run.

Better position, but the double still comes as soon as he makes his move, in this case, it was successful, but this wasn't the norm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y3GGuQYfwQ#t=4m30s

Once again, Rasheed Wallace completely ignores AC Green to double Shaq as soon as he catches the ball. Green does get fouled(non-shooting foul), but Green wasn't good enough by that point to capitalize consistently as he averaged only 3.3 ppg in the series and had a series high of 6 points.

Another example of Pippen coming over and forcing him to go baseline for a tougher contested shot over 7'3" Arvydas Sabonis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyt48...elated#t=9m09s

When Shaq was scoring, he had to work harder and so did the Lakers for his points as re-posts were essetial, but as you can see, even after the re-post, several Portland defenders come over. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9kTt...elated#t=1m16s

Now everyone who followed Shaq in his prime, knows that he liked to use transition opportunities to get good position, but here you can see that Sabonis has the strength to push him out a bit even though he had gotten pretty good position, but when he comes down, there are 3 Portland defenders around him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9kTt...elated#t=1m43s

Doug Collins breaking down Portland's defensive strategy in their successful game 2 win. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izs53PMDE8s#t=1m20s

And yes, as you can see, depth was a big advantage for Portland. The Lakers were called "two deep" during the series while Portland was called "too deep". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR7P3DOCTJw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izs53PMDE8s#t=2m24s

Pretty accurate as the Lakers relied heavily on Shaq and Kobe while Portland was a complete team.

Phil Jackson has talked about how Shaq would get annoyed during the 2000 season that AC Green and Ron Harper's defenders wouldn't even bother defending them and focus more on Shaq, because these players(and Harper was a good role player in fairness) simply weren't real offensive threats by that point.

Now another big factor was the Lakers power forward position which was a weakness, and a big reason why Sacramento took them the maximum 5 games in the first round. AC Green simply couldn't guard the elite power forwards by that point.

Rasheed Wallace ended up having the series of his life. Through the first 5 seasons of his life, Rasheed had four 30+ point games(3 of them in the '96-'97 season and 1 in 2000). But in the 2000 WCF, he had two in that series. He also had a 29/12 game in game 2. In fact, after game 1(when he was ejected, iirc and only played 16 minutes), Rasheed averaged 25.3 ppg over the final 6 games.

Portland had so many threats that aside from their starting 5(all of whom were offensive threats), they had Brian Grant coming off the bench(and he'd average 15/9 when he got a chance to start in Miami the following season), Bonzi Wells was also capable of big games, but also didn't get much playing time due to Portland's talent at SG/SF. Wells also had several big scoring games off the bench, including 20 points in 19 minutes.

It's easy to see why Portland almost beat them. They caused a lot of match up problems and were far more stacked.

[Nick Young]

lmao its too easy with you kobe trolls you run to defend your hero like your life depended on it...

Kobe being goat=

He'll never be up on MJ's level so get used to it

btw if we had perkins game 7 you guys would of gotten thrashed cuz your boy couldn't hit the pacific ocean in game 7

PERKINS IS A F*CKING SCRUB. He is not a good defender, just average. He can't score and he's just an average rebounder. Healthy Bynum shits on him every time they match up and Bynum who needed his knee drained every game still outplayed Perkins on both sides of the floor. Rasheed in game 7 played better and did more than I have ever seen Perkins do in his entire life, both rebounding, defending not to mention he scored alot of nice baskets down low. It was a blessing in disguise for you that Perkins wasn't playing because Rasheed got more minutes. You Boston idiots overrate Perkins as if he was a top center in the league when actually he is just a scrub as he has proven on the Thunder

[The-Legend-24]

Yea and he sure knew how to throw a 24 point lead in the bushes in the finals as well

I see someone is still butt-hurt their team lost in 2010. Have fun going another 20+ years of nothing.

[Nick Young]

Meh. The question should be how did a team with no star power and a 16/7 Rasheed Wallace as its player take a peak Shaq + Kobe-led LA team to 7 games? Depth is irrelevant in the playoffs without star power at the top. There's only been one superstar-less champion(Detroit) the last 31 years.

It's LA who were doing some massive choking by even letting the series get that far.

Yep 6 rings Scottie sucks and had no star power, Damon Stoudamire sucked too and their bench was horrible, Rick Fox was better than Detlef Schremf and JO

[Eat Like A Bosh]

The Blazers were simply deeper, the Lakers had a lot of weaknesses that year, and did not match up that well with the Blazers. Not to mention the Lakers had no one great other than Kobe and Shaq.
The 2001 Lakers were much more well rounded, as they cruised to the title.

[aj242]

2011 NBA Finals says hello


and Shaq had a History of Losing series with a more stacked team.....until Kobe became Kobe.

Yet Shaq was the best player on the team from 96-02!

[RRR3]

Yet Shaq was the best player on the team from 96-04!

Fixed.